<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>“Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Kanto” - Sir Thomas Browne (1658) by Anonymous</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23023540">“Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Kanto” - Sir Thomas Browne (1658)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Persona 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Biology Inaccuracies, Cleaning, Dubious Science, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:27:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,180</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23023540</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He would have done anything, but ‘anything’ has a very long tail.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Stale air, musty and damp.</p>
<p>Though if Ren focuses, he tastes cold salt in the air. So he can’t be wholly buried. Hopefully.</p>
<p>It smells strange, feels strange. He prods the wall and leaps back. The wall is lumpy and coated in a slimy film. He frantically wipes his hand on his jeans.</p>
<p>Light. He needs a</p>
<p>A bright line glows sharp and bright before him. He heads to it on wobbly legs.</p>
<p>A low groan swallows his steps. Not because he’s groaning. And it’s not something he hears as much as a low drone thrumming through his bones. </p>
<p>Thrumming at the slightest pitch lower than what he can possibly tolerate.</p>
<p>The feeling goes on and on, never dissipating. Collecting until he’s all of it and none of him.</p>
<p>His skin crawls, his pores itch. His eyelids constantly gum shut only to be pried apart when he remembers himself, never mind the dark that greets him either way. </p>
<p>His back itches and burns to be pressed to safe quarter. The fresh memory of the slimy wall keeps him from doing so, paired with the cold dread inhabiting his spine it’s all that grounds him.</p>
<p>And the light under the door. And his wobbly legs.</p>
<p>So he lumbers forth, stumbling over spongy ground with his arms outstretched. Fumbling through the dark until his hands make contact with another surface, as warm and slimy as the last. Like with the other wall Ren tears his hands away.</p>
<p>Until again, the light under the door beckons.</p>
<p>Time in the unfamiliar city had tempered his heart to that of a lion’s, but the moisture, the endless dark, the pooling dread tries him. Which means he has to try harder. </p>
<p>Ren takes a few breaths but the humidity thwarts any attempts to get himself oxygenated.</p>
<p>The walls he cannot see close in.</p>
<p>The light. The light.</p>
<p>He touches the door again. Less repulsive when he knew what to expect. In fact it’s not actually that slimy it’s just moist as all get out in here.</p>
<p>Which reminds him: he really needs to get out.</p>
<p>He touches the door again. What he assumed was a damp tacky coating on the door is actually a bunch of squidgy ribbons. Ren sorts through the strands. This one is thick and smooth. This one has lumpy branches. This one feels like a knotted cord.</p>
<p>Kelp all the way down.</p>
<p>He keeps sorting. And sorting. Until he’s elbow deep in unmentionable gunk. A goal makes itself apparent in a hard surface that can’t be rotting seaweed.</p>
<p>Ren finds a door handle and turns it.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>..</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>“I’ll call miss Ohya.”</p>
<p>It’s Ren.</p>
<p>“I hate her,” Kayo snarls.</p>
<p>It’s Ren and his boss.</p>
<p>Voice scratchy, utterly drained, Kayo continues. “I hate her. I hate her. I-”</p>
<p>It’s Ren, his boss, and a bucket of sand. Behind the counter, several minutes before the shop opens.</p>
<p>Making an X with his fingers Ren holds it in front of Kayo’s face. She stops, but it’s probably more to do with the sand she’s coughing up rather than any kind of prompt from Ren.</p>
<p>It’s two spent packs of takamedic, and a broken surgical drain clogged with sand.</p>
<p>The sand makes a smooth, almost soothing sound, pouring to the tile floor and sliding around. Maybe if it wasn’t coming from where it was. Ren grabs his phone.</p>
<p>“Don’t call Ichiko.”</p>
<p>Staring at Kayo, Ren holds up one of the spent packs of takamedic and shakes it. “We’re out.”</p>
<p>Kayo glares ahead.</p>
<p>“We should keep some around, that’s all.” Ren continues, keeping his voice monotone.</p>
<p>Kayo rounds her glare at him glaring back before settling back.</p>
<p>“Wash your hands.” She sounds even more drained, now that the venom has bled from her voice.</p>
<p>“Gotcha,” he says. As if he’s never worked a cafe before.</p>
<p>“No I’m serious,” Kayo says, “wash your hands.”</p>
<p>And when he looks at his groddy hands it all comes back. The dark, the rotting seaweed, the muck under his nails.</p>
<p>He does need to wash his hands.</p>
<p>Ren turns on the faucet with his clean(er) elbow. In the periphery he sees Kayo stand up nonchalantly, without dusting herself off or anything, and whip out her laptop at the bar counter.</p>
<p>“You don’t wanna, uh.” </p>
<p>The sink continues to run. Ren grinds his own teeth, feeling grit that isn’t there. </p>
<p>“Do a rinse or somethin’?”</p>
<p>“What’s the point,” Kayo says flatly. “Gonna have to do it again later.”</p>
<p>Ren frowns.</p>
<p>He washes his hands, orders more takamedic and another surgical drain, sweeps and mops the mess behind the counter.</p>
<p>The first customers of the day filter in, no one bats an eye.</p>
<p>“Heard someone new’s coming to town,” one of them says in lieu of greeting.</p>
<p>Ren waits for them to finish speaking before firing up the milk steamer.</p>
<p>“A recoveree. Only spent a few minutes on the other side by the sound of it. Not sure why she’s being sent here.”</p>
<p>Ren pauses and looks up, this person has heard an awful lot.</p>
<p>The man nods genially, “an acquaintance of miss Sakura’s. Howdy.”</p>
<p>It takes Ren a bit to process everything about that. </p>
<p>“Futaba couldn’t come out?” </p>
<p>The man shakes his head. “Relapse,” he says simply. Turning to Kayo he raises his voice. “How’re ya doin’ miss Murakami?”</p>
<p>Kayo flips him off.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>..</p>
<p>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At first he thinks himself on the edge of waking.</p>
<p>‘A place between dreams and reality’, he had once heard it called.</p>
<p>Little flashes of not quite light. The telltale dim orange/red/brown of light hitting his eyelids glows in the margins.</p>
<p>But when he wakes up again in the humid dark, he swears- swears that—</p>
<p>Ren slowly draws a finger across the lower orbit of his eye to confirm that he is awake and is here again.</p>
<p>Again, the hum is present. On this visit it sounds less like the drone of an airplane. Less constant and metallic, and more- and more—</p>
<p><i>THMP-</i>tmp.    <i>THMP-</i>tmp.     <i>THUMP-</i>tmp.</p>
<p>Ren can’t recall the last time he slept. Actually slept, since his dreams ceased to be so. His thoughts spiral out of control, branching a million different ways. </p>
<p>It could be the eternal dark, convincing him that he hears the blood thrumming through him. Maybe it was the lack of sleep tricking him that the walls pulse and flux.</p>
<p>Once that thought hits it’s too late.</p>
<p>The hum becomes a low mournful groan. The airstream ceases to be remnants of the outside whipping about the ruin and</p>
<p>The entire building around him sighs.</p>
<p>The sound was always here, the occasional plip-plop plip-plop of <i>something</i>. It sounds like- It sounds like— </p>
<p>There’s a rumble from somewhere far away.</p>
<p>A speaker crackles to life.</p>
<p>Krsschhh. Krrssschh. Krssccchhh.</p>
<p>It sounds like dry raspy laughter, from someone who hasn’t laughed in a blue moon and also has severe bronchitis.</p>
<p>Together, the symphony of the structure is cacophonous. It’s all Ren can do to slump against the lumpy barnacle-encrusted wall. The warm contact is the teeniest of comforts, but a comfort he’ll greedily cling to here.</p>
<p>A comfort that goes out the window and has his spine cold and skin stiff all over again when he opens his eyes.</p>
<p>He opened the door.</p>
<p>Krrsscchchhh. Krrrssccchhhh. Krrrssssscchhh.</p>
<p>The speaker beckons.</p>
<p>The next room is bright and cavernous, yet seems to have been frozen in time down to the dust floating in the air. Gunky pulpy posters cover whatever wall not occupied by seaweed, sunbleached and weathered beyond recognition. </p>
<p>Thick kelp and seaweed runs rampant all over the floor. Until they don’t, and they’re electric cables of all shapes and sizes. Snapped, fraying, dangling from the</p>
<p>Ren looks up to see the big blue sky, framed by the rusty mouth of a metal behemoth. That he’s in the belly of.</p>
<p>A cool breeze fluffs his hair. Something screeches. <i>THMP-</i>tmp. The hum of the</p>
<p>Of the</p>
<p>A fire breaks out in his spinal cord. A violent itch seizes him from head to toe and Ren whips around to find</p>
<p>A— daruma. </p>
<p>Moldy, sunbleached and dry and salt-crusted like everything else around here. But it’s enough.</p>
<p>And like it’s been watching and judging him this whole time, the speaker guffaws in a fit of arhythmic crackling.</p>
<p>High above there’s a metallic squeal. It stops abruptly.</p>
<p>
  <i>Screeeeeeeeeee</i>
</p>
<p>In the periphery Ren sees a weathervane, crowned by a bird with a very long beak.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not known what causes it. Symptoms range from coughing up debris depending on where subjects were recovered from. To lethargy, to memory loss.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>“I don’t hate her.”<p>Kayo sounds raw and drained, her voice maybe half a decibel louder than the various beeps and boops of the surrounding machinery.</p>
<p>“When’s the last time you guys spoke?” Ren asks, handing  Kayo her overnight kit. </p>
<p>She takes it wordlessly. So long is her silence Ren assumes he won’t be getting a response. </p>
<p>“A while.”</p>
<p>The room at the doctor’s office is never quiet. Some machines hiss, some machines beep, and there’s a large tree outside that is home to lots of chatty birds. </p>
<p>Yet the overpowering smell of antiseptic drains any liveliness or warmth from the room.</p>
<p>“Once I hated her for it.” </p>
<p>“Hat<i>ed</i>?” Ren parrots.</p>
<p>“Well,” Kayo eeks out before descending into another coughing fit.  </p>
<p>He runs off to fetch a glass of water. Thankfully she’s done when he returns. </p>
<p>“Yeah. Ha<i>ted</i>,” she says at last. It could be that she’s spent the last night intermittently horking up sand. Her tone isn’t convincing.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>“Confusion took hold today when construction workers near Aoyama-Itchome station discovered buried ruins at the Shujin High School construction site. The area has been secured and is pending investigation by archaeological authorities.”<div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>While Ren understands his sleep is no longer his,  acceptance is a different beast.<p>Again. The humidity, the hum, the smell of salt, the pulsing. It’s hot, there’s no doubting that. But the feel of his skin to the touch, and how his skin feels, like tv static.</p>
<p>It’s not clear if it’s hot or cold or a measure of temperature that exists at all.</p>
<p>All together, it’s like being inside a massive orrery, where every component is so much he can’t ignore any of them.</p>
<p>So he . . . blanks.</p>
<p>This door opens, that door opens. And he sees the sun-bleached posters, the weather worn statues. They paradoxically do and don’t hit. </p>
<p>‘Only a dream’ constantly echoes through his mind. As an aside, as a plea.</p>
<p>Only a dream, and yet. His grip on the plastic basin tightens. Something he brought on a whim, as a folly. For no reason at all. For no reason at all!</p>
<p>Something he brought just in case.</p>
<p>The contents of the basin rattle around and he takes a moment to worry over the more sensitive items. Brittle sticks of incense rolled into a washcloth, carefully balanced on top of two heavy water bottles.</p>
<p>He goes and goes. The noises and feelings keep him from focusing on any one thing, and there are no barriers to keep him from going.</p>
<p>Until there is one very large one. Of course his legs led him here of course they</p>
<p>He comes dangerously close to dropping the basin. For a precious moment his head tunes it all out, the hum, the humidity, the oppressive lack of light.</p>
<p>He brought the basin just in case. He brought it for no reason at all.</p>
<p>Ren leans his forehead against the iron partition. Shutting his eyes tight as… whatever this feeling is calcifies the blood in his veins. </p>
<p>He brought the basin</p>
<p>The hum. On the other side, something is humming. Every time he thinks it, the humming and humid heat on the other side grows. Until his skin itches and all his hair stands on end.</p>
<p>Ren clutches the basin. If memory serves there’s another way… there. He won’t do this half way, not when he’s gotten himself all worked up for no reason.</p>
<p>It can’t be. It won’t be.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>“Dating results of the ruins discovered at the Shujin High School construction site have revealed them to be of modern origin. Given the nature of the objects excavated at the ruins, the building history of the area is now under investigation by law enforcement authorities.”<p>“Netizens have drawn comparisons to a similar incident last July, where ruins were similarly discovered in Setagaya-ku near Yongen Jaya station then subsequently  dated to modern origin.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>It can be, and it <i>WILL</i> be.<p>Thinking back on it, the precise moment it becomes so is a dark rainy afternoon where Ren was left to man the cafe in Kayo’s absence.</p>
<p>“Does it hurt?” Ren asks, trying to keep his voice as still as he can.</p>
<p>Takemi snorts. “How much sand and marbles have you hacked up in a lifetime?”</p>
<p>“A lot?” Ren interjects. “Does it hurt a lot?”</p>
<p>“Dr. Sakura’s the expert here, should I put her on? Oi!”</p>
<p>“Nonono wait!” Ren panics, only to regret opening his mouth and possibly making this call at all.</p>
<p>“Guinea pig…?”</p>
<p>The silence is long. Heavy rain batters the windows, the gutter is loud in its strain to handle the downpour, the phone is staticky, but there’s no doubt that Takemi is waiting. Ever attentive now that he’s piqued her interest in the wrong way.</p>
<p>“Ren, what’s this about?”</p>
<p>So he tries to… be like the rain falling outside, always flowing no matter what.</p>
<p>“Just. Wondering.” his gummed up mandibles move creakily.</p>
<p>“Ren.” Takemi says louder.</p>
<p>“Does it hurt a lot?” he repeats, voice small. He’s just wondering, just- just--</p>
<p>Tell him it . . doesn-</p>
<p>“That’s a different question.”</p>
<p>“Please.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>“Currently, there is no evidence the two incidents are connected.”<div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Dust has a way of making things, even the most familiar of them, alien.<p>Ren knows and doesn’t know what to expect. The dust surprises him, but it would logically be present. Or maybe not, there isn’t exactly a playbook for how this goes.</p>
<p>The cables are new, or he’s forgotten them. Caked in moss and mold to where Ren can’t tell cable from seaweed. They all lead to one point, which Ren follows. And follows. </p>
<p>Initially, he doesn’t know what he’s looking at. Dust has a way of making the familiar, alien.</p>
<p>It’s like he’s on the scene of an endoscopy, as in <i>in</i> there with the camera. Or scenes of the deepest seas, hanging alongside creatures for whom sunlight is a myth. </p>
<p>Before him is what looks like a mossy coral pile. A large one.</p>
<p>The sinking feeling from when he was preparing for this trip returns in spades, and shovels and clubs and maces. His sternum becomes a sole of a boot gradually flattening his heart. If he breathes, if he moves his heart at all, it’ll explode.</p>
<p>It’s like watching an endoscopy, when his hands set the basin down and reach towards the mossy alien coral. But he’s not a distant observer to events passed. Regardless of the imminent implosion of his heart, his hands continue.</p>
<p>Ren blows a quick breath. Some dust unsettles, most of it doesn’t.</p>
<p>He</p>
<p>Grabs a cloth. Idly brushes and swipes at the flatter surfaces. Dust gives way to long strands of ashen brittle grass. Eventually it looks less a mossy coral pile and more a massive stack of dead grass. He</p>
<p>Rakes through it with his bare fingers. It’s awful to touch, sun bleached. Air dried. Rough and coarse. It conjures memories of rotting loam. Gardening experience has him expecting critters buried inside to leap out any moment.</p>
<p>And yet he</p>
<p>Keeps at it, as the critters never scared him. Then he parts the curtain of dead grass and</p>
<p>
  <i>Dust has a way of-</i>
</p>
<p>Ren yelps and averts his eyes, not before catching an eyeful of a ghost.</p>
<p>Combing through it- his hair bores holes in Ren’s chest. Less snags than he expected. Sometimes he has to pull hair from armour joints. Cut hair out of shoulder pauldrons.</p>
<p>Miraculously, the hair stays rooted. Ren wouldn’t have expected that from</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>It’s also never come up.</p>
<p>The knife he brought to chip away at barnacles and kelp isn’t sharp enough for this kind of thing.</p>
<p>The saw-like sword laying next to them is though. It feels alien in his grip. The braid is so large it takes Ren’s entire arm hugging it to his chest to hold it. Braid secured and sword as close to the root of the braid as he can bear, Ren severs the braid in one clean slice.</p>
<p>With all the dead grass cleared it brings him back to the cables and their leading up to one point that one point being directly behind the</p>
<p>His fingers feel whitesearing hotcold as Ren grabs him by the shoulders and pulls forward and</p>
<p>The cables move as Ren tugs. They move and Ren sees that they originate from inside-</p>
<p>Ren lets go of the shoulders as if burnt.</p>
<p>The massive braid coils around him like a boa constrictor. It’s presence alone feels itchy, but overall the haircut (hackjob more like) is neat. But leaving it here- leaving him here-- every single thing that happened is---</p>
<p>Unbearable.</p>
<p>Again Ren takes the washcloth and dampens it the barest bit before dabbing at it- his face. </p>
<p>His</p>
<p>Skin feels…</p>
<p>Ren can’t bring the word into existence. Each swipe of the cloth is carried out with a surgically light touch. Which might not be necessary since it- he’s kept this long. Taking a chance here isn’t appealing.</p>
<p>Not that it ever felt like a dream but eventually the time goes so long it feels less like a dream than ever. At last Ren drops the washcloth, now in an unmentionable state, and stills his hands. Two empty plastic bottles litter the ground. The water in the basin is murky. It’s hard to breathe. </p>
<p>He’s never done too hot with incense.</p>
<p>It’s shabby. Maybe doing nothing would be kinder. Yet doing nothing feels</p>
<p>Suddenly the pressure on his heart skyrockets. Hitting a fever pitch when the entire room lurches and he’s quickly and painfully reminded that he was on borrowed time here. That the ark had been compromised by the captain himself no less. </p>
<p>Water crashes into the engine room at breakneck speed. Too soon it’s up to his waist his chest. He’d once heard that ships take hours to sink. This one’s gonna go much faster.</p>
<p>Ren pinches his cheek, he wants to wake up. He wants to wake up but not before</p>
<p>
  <i>He won’t do this half way.</i>
</p>
<p>Ren flails about, desperate to propel his heavy cumbersome slab of meat of an earthly vessel to him. It was already a miracle that he kept this long but lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place, and Ren won’t do this half way.</p>
<p>The churning water is like quicksand like wet cement. Ren moves an inch, the water flings him around like a tissue.</p>
<p>It reaches his gullet, his chin, his</p>
<p>It burns hitting the inside of his throat.</p>
<p>Before the dark takes him, the last thing he sees is two bright yellow lights.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>